Trump-DeSantis rivalry takes off as Florida governor builds 2024 buzz

Florida’s governor is expected to announce his presidential bid in May or later if he runs; the former president plans campaign launch this week.

Ron DeSantis handily won re-election, and his victory speech underscored his political ambitions. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Ron DeSantis’s huge win in Florida, a standout for Republicans amid disappointments, is fuelling a surge in support for his presidential prospects from party leaders, donors and activists in the GOP’s Donald Trump-averse wing, as well as fresh attacks from the former president.

Candidates Mr Trump endorsed in some pivotal races for Senate and governorships lost Tuesday, hurting GOP efforts to regain congressional majorities and control of statehouses. That has prompted some Republicans to more openly call for the party to move past the former president.

If he decides to run, Mr DeSantis isn’t expected to announce a bid until after his state’s legislative session ends in early May, people familiar with the early discussions said.

Republican activists in Iowa, where the party’s presidential nomination process will start with the first-in-the-nation caucuses in early 2024, said they are eagerly anticipating an eventual visit from the 44-year-old Florida governor.

“I would love to see DeSantis run and would back him 100 per cent,” said Kevin Van Otterloo, a former GOP chairman in one of Iowa’s most conservative counties. “There are a lot of people who are tired of Trump and looking for something new, and DeSantis doesn’t make everybody mad all the time.”

But Mr Trump is sticking with plans to try to lock in early support by announcing another presidential bid on Tuesday night in Florida at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, despite some pressure from supporters to delay that until after Georgia’s December 6 Senate runoff.

The former president’s team has for months anticipated a challenge by Mr DeSantis and would prefer that others get in the race so support in the non-Trump wing of the party is splintered.

Mr Trump has wasted no time going after the governor and Thursday night issued a lengthy statement attacking him as disloyal and taking credit for his political rise, thanks to an endorsement in the 2018 gubernatorial primary.

Recalling his own 2016 battle in a crowded primary field, Mr Trump relished how he “easily knocked them out, one by one. We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win,” he said, using his Make America Great Again slogan.

The attack came in a statement that also claimed News Corp and Fox News were “all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious,” an apparent reference to recent opinion articles in News Corp media properties, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Fox Corp. and News Corp share common ownership.

Despite not appearing on the ballot, Mr Trump displayed his appeal in dozens of packed rallies during the midterm election cycle, a loyalty that has also fueled his small-dollar fundraising machine. His unconventional style and celebrity attracted new voters to the party and candidates up and down the ballot adopted his policies. Past predictions of his political demise, including in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot, didn’t materialise.

“People love President Trump,” said Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County GOP, adding he thinks there’s a place in the party for both men. “I love DeSantis. We worked our hearts out for him. However, we love him for governor and for president in 2028. I think he needs to wait his turn.”

Mr DeSantis’s campaign declined to comment for this article. The newfound urgency for some in looking for an alternative to Mr Trump comes after several of the candidates he backed either lost or were trailing in votes still being counted, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Several candidates he backed in primaries earlier this year also lost those elections. His biggest victories so far this week are in Ohio, where J.D. Vance won in a seat formerly held by a Republican, and North Carolina, where Republican Ted Budd prevailed.

While Mr Trump has proved to be a master of online fundraising, the party’s more-establishment-minded big donor community could give a boost to Mr DeSantis, should he enter the race.

“DeSantis’s victory will accelerate his momentum,” said Chart Westcott, a Dallas-based investor and longtime GOP donor. “Trump remains the most important national figure in the party. However, it is now indisputable that DeSantis is right behind him and offers activists, donors and voters an alternative to Trump.”

Some of Mr DeSantis’s close advisers and supporters think he should seize the opportunity and run now for the White House. The governor is among a group of potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates scheduled to speak late next week in Las Vegas at the annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Mr Trump has spoken to the group in the past, but isn’t on this year’s schedule.

Other possible presidential hopefuls include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

Brian Ballard, a lobbyist with close ties to Messrs Trump and DeSantis, said the governor’s win will have lasting effects in a state that delivers more than a tenth of the total electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

“He has realigned the Florida political environment in a way that Republicans will be the dominant party for decades,” Mr Ballard said. “He forged new voter coalitions, and he pierced the South Florida stranglehold of Democrats. And he’s shown the national Republican Party how to win in what had up to now been a traditional purple state.” Both men have displayed fundraising prowess, and each is sitting on tens of millions of dollars that could be used for a presidential campaign.

The governor has sketched a second-term agenda that includes targeting what he calls “woke capital” – entities that are part of the environmental, social and corporate governance movement – and has alluded to passing a law allowing people to carry concealed guns without permits. He faces pressure from some advocates to further restrict abortion access in Florida, though he avoided the topic during the heat of his recent campaign after signing a 15-week abortion ban in April.

His victory over Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who later became a Democrat, was a rout. Mr DeSantis won 62 of the state’s 67 counties and became the first GOP candidate for governor since 2002 to win Miami-Dade County, which is majority Hispanic. Statewide, Mr DeSantis won more than half of the Latino vote, according to the AP VoteCast survey of more than 3300 Floridians.

After winning his second term by 19 percentage points, Mr DeSantis delivered a victory speech that underscored his political ambition. His supporters gathered in Tampa responded with chants of “two more years,” a reference to 2024.

“DeSantis is a rising stock right now, and Trump is a falling stock,” said Scott Reed, a Republican and former chief political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Any way you slice it, Trump’s involvement in the election was negative.”

There’s no guarantee Mr DeSantis’s stock will keep rising. Other GOP governors in recent presidential nomination races – including Jeb Bush of Florida and Scott Walker of Wisconsin – were also seen as hot prospects, before seeing their campaigns collapse.

So far, Mr DeSantis hasn’t engaged in a back and forth with the former president and the governor’s allies think the more it happens, the more Mr Trump will hurt himself among Republicans.

“DeSantis has the high ground coming off a fantastic win this past week, and if he were to start engaging in counterattacks or responding to Trump, then he’d only be lowering himself into all the muck,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist. “If he takes the bait on all these attacks that Trump is trying to escalate, a lot of people will be turned off by it.”

The Wall Street Journal